Since the 1940's, the beverage industry has utilized vending machines as a means of selling cold beverages to consumers. Since that time, there has been a distinct evolution in beverage vending machine design in an effort to better communicate with the consumer and thus sell more beverages. Early models of beverage vending machines concentrated on ornamental shapes of the actual machine to appeal to consumers. From there, increasing emphasis was put on graphics as a way of identifying the beverage company whose products were within the machine. Further evolution led to the use of illuminated signage. This illuminated signage eventually comprised the majority of the front of the vending machine by the mid-1980's.
At this point, beverage companies recognized the importance of depicting a picture of one of the products contained in the machine. The actual product in the machine was represented by indicia located in or immediately adjacent to the specific selection button. This indicia was generally a small, rectangular card approximately 1″×3″. By the end of the 20th century, the trend in design shifted to more prominent display of the indicia relating to the specific selection buttons. As a reference, the size of the product selection indicia increased 200%-500% on new equipment used by the major beverage companies.
This has resulted in a dilemma over the marketing usefulness of existing beverage vending equipment. It is important to note that there are conservatively 2,000,000+pieces of beverage vending equipment in the market today that are limited in the size of product identification indicia that can be used. This is leading to premature obsolescence of useful beverage vending machines due to inadequate product identification indicia size relative to the new equipment designs.
Existing beverage vending equipment currently uses product identification indicia on or immediately adjacent to the actual switch that will deliver a given product selection. The existing product identification indicia are approximately 1″×3″. This is believed to create difficulty and confusion for the consumer on the choice of product, as the product identification indicia are difficult to read due to their size.